The actor and model Anita Pallenberg, who was a muse to the Rolling Stones and appeared alongside Mick Jagger in the cult film Performance, has died at the age of 73.

Pallenberg’s death was announced on Instagram by her friend, the actor Stella Schnabel. The cause of death is currently unknown.

Pallenberg was born in German-occupied Rome in January 1944. Her father was an Italian travel agent and artist, while her mother was a German secretary. After being expelled from German boarding school aged 16, she began modelling, first in Italy and later in New York, where she spent time at Andy Warhol’s Factory.

In 1965 Pallenberg attended a Rolling Stones concert and managed to get backstage, where she met the band. It would lead to a relationship with Stones guitarist Brian Jones, which Pallenberg said soon turned violent. She left Jones for Keith Richards, and the pair settled in London, where they would have three children. The pair struggled with drug abuse and would later separate in 1980.

During her time with the Stones, Pallenberg became a muse for the band. She provided backing vocals for Sympathy for the Devil and Mick Jagger was said to have remixed tracks on the band’s 1968 album Beggars Banquet based on her feedback. Pallenberg and Jagger would later star together in Nicolas Roeg’s 1970 crime drama Performance.

Family …Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards present their son Marlon to the world in 1969. Photograph: John Minihan/Getty Images

Pallenberg would go on to act in a number of other films, portraying The Black Queen in Barbarella, and appearing in the 1968 sex farce Candy, alongside Marlon Brando and Richard Burton. She would resume her acting career in her 60s, featuring in Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales (2007), and Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely (2007), among others.

In her later years Pallenberg pursued a career in fashion, completing a four-year fashion and textile degree at Central Saint Martins in 1994. However, she , describing the industry as “too nasty, too rip-off, too hard”. Pallenberg also considered writing a memoir but was concerned it would be too “salacious”.

The interview: Anita Pallenberg

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“I had several publishers and they were all the same,” she told the Observer’s Lynn Barber in 2008. “They all wanted salacious. And everybody is writing autobiographies and that’s one reason why I’m not going to do it. If young Posh Spice can write her autobiography, then I don’t want to write one!’

Marianne Faithfull lead the tributes to the late star. “Anita used to say that we (the two of us) are light years ahead of the Rolling Stones,” she posted on Facebook. “Witty and probably true!”

She added: “We had good times and bad times, but I only remember the good times now. She taught me so much, especially after we got clean; it was very good, and so much fun! Farewell my love, go well.”

Pallenberg is survived by two children with Richards, Marlon and Angela. Their second son, Tara, died during infancy in 1976.